Jeff Malcolm Shines In Yale's National Championship Victory Over Quinnipiac

April 14, 2013|Mike Anthony, manthony@courant.com

Jeff Malcolm celebrated his 24th birthday Saturday by leading Yale to the national title. He made 36 saves for his third shutout of the season, out-playing Quinnipiac's Eric Hartzell on the sport's biggest stage.

Malcolm was incredible at times. In front of him, Yale skaters were better as the game went on. The Bulldogs got a puck past Hartzell with 3.5 seconds left in the second period and rolled in the third.

Malcolm set it up with the best save of the game, preserving a scoreless tie in the second period by stopping Jordan Samuels-Thomas with his right pad/blocker. Samuels-Thomas was alone in front -- all alone -- faked right, went left, a good move that Malcolm read and denied.

Here is some of what Malcolm had to say after Yale was done celebrating on the ice at the CONSOL Energy Center ...

On playing with a leg injury that cost him five games: "A lot of guys played injured this year. I wasn't the only one. So at that point, when you're hurt, you've got to be an athlete and try to get back and contribute to your teammates. Obviously, it's one of our goals at the start of the year to be here. It's just an amazing feeling right now."

On having lost three to Quinnipiac coming in (only one he took part in): "It's tough to not get up for a national championship game. I just felt comfortable in there today, and we got some bounces. Hartzell played unbelievable. He has all year. Yeah, here we are."

On all the attention on Hartzell coming in perhaps allowing him to simply focus even better: "Like I said before, the national tournament, if you can't get up for that, you don't really have a heartbeat. But there are a lot of good goaltenders in college hockey. That doesn't change the fact that I still have to play a game. I mean, it doesn't really affect me, I don't think."

Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold on Malcolm: "That's the best I've ever seen him play. He's been kind of streaky in his career there. He gets on runs. The game we played in Atlantic City, we beat them 3Â¿0. They outplayed us that game, really outplayed us. Hartzell was a stud, and we got a nice goal early, and then we got two mediocre ones a little bit later. But, yeah, Malcolm was great tonight. You've got to give the kid credit. It's the biggest game of his career, and he pitches a shutout. We had 30Â¿something shots. We definitely had a lot of chances in the first two periods. The game got away from us there. I wouldn't say 3Â¿0, but we could have easily been up 1Â¿0 or 2Â¿0 going into the third and it's a different hockey game.'